UN treaty for world's disabled people takes effect A United Nations pact aimed at boosting the rights of the 650 million disabled people around the world took effect Saturday. Twenty-five countries so far have ratified the treaty, which outlaws discrimination based on disability in the workplace and in education.
Mexican journalist Lydia Cacho Ribeiro has been designated the laureate of the 2008 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize. The investigative journalist exposed the involvement of wealthy Mexican businessmen and politicians in prostitution and child pornography rings. She also wrote about the violence in the northern city of Ciudad Juarez, where hundreds of women have been killed. The prize will be awarded in the Mozambican capital Maputo on 3 May, World Press Freedom Day. The award includes a cash prize of USD 25,000. (Radio Netherlands)
Saudi women are being kept in perpetual childhood so male relatives can exercise “guardianship” over them, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) group has said. The New York-based group says Saudi women have to obtain permission from male relatives to work, travel, study, marry or even receive health care. Their access to justice is also severely constrained, it says. The group says the Saudi establishment sacrifices basic human rights to maintain male control over women. Saudi clerics see the guardianship of women's honor as a key to the country's social and moral order.
Study links autism to parents. In another sign pointing to an inherited component to autism, a study released on Monday found that having a schizophrenic parent or a mother with psychiatric problems roughly doubled a child's risk of being autistic.
